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User: ebrandsberg

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  1. Re:So let's send a probe on Asteroid From Another Star System Found Orbiting Wrong Way Near Jupiter (theguardian.com) · · Score: 1

    two part probe: Once in the orbit of the asteroid, they detach from each other, and one will collide with the object, and the other will scoop up debris as it passes immediately after to return or analyze. No need to actually match speeds.

  2. Re:Show me the money on Alan Turing's Chemistry Hypothesis Turned Into a Desalination Filter (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 0

    The yacht set may may help pay for the research that trickles down to the masses. It is somewhat like the Apollo program. Don't confuse this with "trickle down economics" though, that is just Voodoo.

  3. Honestly, it is irrelevant. They have the data on who accessed what, and should be able to data-mine out the bad actors faster and easier than any news organization can, since they have access to the data. If they want to show that they can be trusted, THEY should be the ones discovering these players, cutting them off, and making it public. The fact that anybody at this point in time can discover something like this means they are either a) not looking for bad actors or b) they know who they are, and want to keep the $$ flowing in despite this, until someone forces them to make it public. Either way it means they aren't doing what they should be doing and should be smacked with the full power of congress.

  4. That there was another one. The issue is that a news organization needed to point it out, instead of Facebook discovering this through the analysis of their access patterns from these firms. After they realized that one was doing this, they should have been analyzing to find others immediately.

  5. Re: Use our Postal System as their Delivery Boy? on President Trump Slams Amazon For 'Causing Tremendous Loss To the United States' (cnet.com) · · Score: 5, Informative

    The Postal service does not operate at a loss. Instead, they have been forced to pre-pay into a fund to cover retirement for postal workers that haven't even been born yet. https://about.usps.com/who-we-are/financials/annual-reports/fy2010/ar2010_4_002.htm

    There is nothing that says that the postal service need delivery packages at a loss.

  6. Underground segway track instead? on Elon Musk Changes 'Boring Company' Vision To Reward Cyclists and Pedestrians (techcrunch.com) · · Score: 2

    If hyperloop is going to be used for short transit trips for pedestrians and bikes, the overhead of having a vacuum enclosed space, with pods shooting around begs the question--can't we just build the tunnels and build a setup that uses something like a segway or personal vehicle on a small track to get your around to your destination? It seems this would have much a much smaller failure impact (people can still walk in the tunnels) and would require far less investment in technology and upfront cost to build.

  7. Re:Because they do no support on Lenovo Lays Off a Chunk of Its Motorola Smartphone Team · · Score: 1

    The Moto X4 under the Android One banner has certain requirements to use that branding, including monthly updates. While a few months for the updates to start coming, they seem to be getting them out more regularly now. The phone is also under non-Android One branding, but it appears that those phones are receiving some of the benefits of having an AO software release as well.

  8. Like PostgresConf US 2018? April 16-20, 2018 on Time To Bring Back the Software User Conference (zdnet.com) · · Score: 1

    https://postgresconf.org/

  9. Re:Stable API on The Insane Amount of Backward Compatibility in Google Maps (tnhh.net) · · Score: 1

    This doesn't mean that they don't still support the PNG interface. You CAN have multiple versions of apis active for exactly situations like this.

  10. Re:Doubt it - desperate people power food delivery on Within Next Five Years Your Pizzas Will Probably Be Delivered by Autonomous Cars, Domino's Pizza CEO Says (thestreet.com) · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I wonder if someone will take up the banner and provide a food delivery service for many restaurants, so that each store doesn't have to buy their own vehicles. Oh wait... https://www.ubereats.com

  11. Re:Apple's problem on HTC, Motorola Say They Don't Slow Old Phones Like Apple Does (theverge.com) · · Score: 2

    This is a sizing issue of the original battery, where it can sustain voltage after a reasonable amount of use in the lifetime of the product. It is a DEFECT they were covering up.

  12. The issue isn't the slowing on HTC, Motorola Say They Don't Slow Old Phones Like Apple Does (theverge.com) · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The issue two-fold, and many vendor are guilty of the first one:
    1) They aren't sizing the batteries in such a way so that the peak voltage can be sustained more than two years from release under normal use.
    2) They didn't provide details of WHY the phones were slowing down, so people would understand that a cheaper battery replacement would restore performance.

    The fact that they slowed it down without detailing why tells me it was a play to get more sales AND to prevent warranty work. The Nexus 6p had a similar issue where after the battery wore down, it was causing the phone to turn off due to low voltage. Google usually replaced the phone, often with a new Pixel phone as well. Apple was trying to make sure this didn't happen with this change, and by the way, once it got slower, people would tend to BUY the upgrade, not send it in for repairs.

  13. I can't wear a watch: carpel tunnel syndrome on People Still Aren't Buying Smartwatches -- and It's Only Going To Get Worse (businessinsider.com) · · Score: 1

    No matter what the technology can do, I can't wear a watch. Why? It triggers carpal tunnel syndrome. The pressure of even a leather watch strap is enough to cause issues. I suspect many other people have had this issue as well, but there is very little documentation of such issues in the health community.

  14. Re:That's what I love with modern society on Tesla Is Prohibiting Commercial Drivers From Using Its Supercharger Stations (theverge.com) · · Score: 1

    Or, just don't buy the Tesla. At least they are grandfathering in older vehicles, so no, they aren't changing things on the fly.

  15. The discussion is about them lowering the processor speed unconditionally to avoid drawing higher voltage on a battery that was only 20% degraded, to prevent phone shutdowns while the battery still had power. This is likely a similar problem to the phone shutdowns that other phone makers have experienced, such as the Nexus 6p, which Google ended up replacing many of with Pixel phones under warranty. Apple is trying to avoid warranty replacement instead of having a battery control circuit that detected that the voltage was getting too low, and only THEN throttling.

  16. Re:Translation: For one whole day on Alphabet's Project Loon Delivers Internet To 100,000 People In Puerto Rico (engadget.com) · · Score: 1

    Except this IS what is said in the article: "Project Loon announced today that it has worked with AT&T and T-Mobile to successfully deliver basic internet to over 100,000 Puerto Ricans to the internet". This implies that if you have a mobile phone, it is somehow using Loon for internet access, implying that the towers are involved, unless they have fitted the project Loon baloons with LTE transmitters as well, which is possible. In either case, people don't need to know they are using Loon if they are using their cellphones to connect.

  17. Re:Translation: For one whole day on Alphabet's Project Loon Delivers Internet To 100,000 People In Puerto Rico (engadget.com) · · Score: 4, Informative

    I think the implication is that some AT&T and T-Mobile towers are online BECAUSE they were able to leverage Loon to connect, i.e. your cellphone itself wouldn't be working in areas without it.

  18. Moto x4 has headphone jack, FM Radio and is waterproof. Different models have different configurations for dual sim, although the Project Fi Android One version has single sim+Micro SD.

  19. The prices don't seem too unreasonable:

    Smart net (the packaging at issue) gives you 10GB for 4.99 Euro
    General bandwidth appears to be 2GB for 9.99 Euro or up to 30GB for 30 Euro

    Clearly the "special" access plans are cheaper, but it isn't unreasonable the prices for the bandwidth without the smart packages.

  20. Misleading on Portuguese ISP Shows What The Net Looks Like Without Net Neutrality (boingboing.net) · · Score: 5, Informative

    Based on what I can gather, the way this plan works is that they offer some amount of bandwidth to the base plan for the general internet, then for a small amount, you can have more bandwidth specifically for particular services at a discounted rate vs. the normal overage rate. This will inevitably lead to fully walled gardens, but it isn't quite there yet. I suspect that they are trying to prevent people from using random peer to peer streaming services that put a strain on every available upstream link, and instead trying to limit where the excessive bandwidth is coming, so they can manage things better. It isn't about access exactly, but billing and cost.

  21. True, this would make things a bit more complex, although I'm sure legal wording could be added in to relate the corporate ownership of the new entity, etc. OR it could just be worded that if a patent is licensed to another entity that the patent can be disputed under the rules that would apply to the new entity, without any regard to if they had owned the patent prior or not. This would insure that the most lenient jurisdiction that the patent is licensed into can be used to dispute the patent as a whole.

  22. Simple fix on Tribal 'Sovereign Immunity' Patent Protection Could Be Outlawed (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If a patent is licensed by an entity that is a former owner of the patent, then the patent may be challenged as if the license holder was the owner of the patent in all respects, including jurisdiction. Done. No more shenanigans of selling off patents only to re-license the code to avoid exposure.

  23. Big-rigs will be the first autonomous vehicles on Driverless Cars Are Giving Engineers a Fuel Economy Headache (bloomberg.com) · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Consider: Many long-haul trucks operate mostly on well maintained highways between distribution centers. Ten or more of them could be linked together scanning for issues, and communicating with each other, possibly with a lead car in the front that can react to accidents and incidents before they even pass, similar to over-sized loads on the road today. Even if not driving between distro centers, they can use existing rest-areas as stopping points where local drivers can take over in shifts.

  24. This may not have been Equifax on Equifax Website Hacked Again, this Time To Redirect To Fake Flash Update (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This sounds suspiciously like a DNS poisoning attack, which could have been impacting his ISP, but targeting a domain used by Equifax. Such attacks are completely outside of the control of the target. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNS_spoofing

  25. I think this closely corresponds to the evaluation on if you should sell stock options as they vest with a company. The thought experiment with this is: Would you sell your options, then with cash in hand, invest it back into the company or should you invest into ANOTHER company. If you can't say that any money you invest should go into the company you are working for, then you should cash out and invest elsewhere (tax considerations and such aside). Would you as an investor have one team that failed, lost everybody but the COO, now CEO, and then have him rebuild with a completely new team with the money, from scratch, OR would you take that money, and invest into a team that came together and has the pedigree to actually execute in the new space already? Keeping the money in the old company just doesn't make sense vs. re-evaluating where it should go with a fresh perspective. It is a sunk cost fallacy to keep it in the old company.